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Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Lockdown brains

by

21 days ago
20250729
Dr David Bratt

Dr David Bratt

The three COVID-19 years were a tu­mul­tuous pe­ri­od marked by so­cial iso­la­tion, lifestyle dis­rup­tions and stress. We know that hear­ing or talk­ing or see­ing news about COVID-19 now trig­gers Post Trau­mat­ic Stress Dis­or­der or PTSD, a men­tal health con­di­tion caused by an ex­treme­ly stress­ful or ter­ri­fy­ing event. I have al­ways won­dered how much of that PTSD is due not on­ly to the fear of COVID but to the fear, so­cial iso­la­tion, lifestyle dis­rup­tion and stress of the lock­down.

How can one ever for­get dri­ving from Diego Mar­tin ear­ly that first Sun­day morn­ing of the COVID lock­down, pass­ing one or two lone­ly cars on the Co­corite stretch, St James clear as far as the eye could see, and, as we came around the QRC cor­ner at the Sa­van­nah, en­coun­ter­ing a scene of des­o­la­tion, an emp­ty ex­panse of Mar­aval Road lead­ing up to the Mar­aval round­about, not a car parked in front of the lim­ing spot op­po­site QRC or any­where up the road and not a sin­gle per­son walk­ing or jog­ging up or down.

Against my wife’s wish­es, “Let’s go home,” I stopped the car and got out. Si­lence greet­ed me as I looked around in be­wil­der­ment. The si­lence was un­nerv­ing. I hasti­ly got back in. We cir­cled the Sa­van­nah with­out talk­ing and re­turned home, chas­tised at our ex­pe­ri­ence, at hav­ing the gump­tion to go out to see what was hap­pen­ing in town. Na­da. Noth­ing! Just think­ing about that one ex­pe­ri­ence makes my heart race, my breath­ing rate in­crease and my brain slow down from anx­i­ety. Over the next few weeks, that ex­pe­ri­ence hap­pened again and again. Emp­ty neigh­bour­hoods, emp­ty parks, emp­ty of­fices, emp­ty minds.

What is the ef­fect of those re­peat­ed emo­tion­al in­sults that hap­pened to all of us, even those who did not get COVID?

We have long known that the virus of COVID can dam­age not on­ly the lungs and the heart but al­so the brain. It now seems the lock­down it­self can dam­age the brain too.

Two stud­ies pub­lished last week at­test to this. The re­search was done us­ing MRIs of the brain of healthy in­di­vid­u­als. It’s pos­si­ble to tell the age of a per­son by analysing MRIs of the brain. The first study looked at the brains of ado­les­cent boys and girls who had not ex­pe­ri­enced COVID in­fec­tion. It found two things. First COVID lock­downs pre­ma­ture­ly aged the brains of both co­horts. Sec­ond­ly, the age­ing af­fect­ed girls more than boys. On the av­er­age, af­ter lock­down, girls’ brains ap­peared just over four years old­er than ex­pect­ed, com­pared with 1.4 years old­er for boys. The changes in girls, who are much more in­ter­est­ed in so­cial groups and in­ter­ac­tions and are there­fore more sus­cep­ti­ble to be­ing un­able to in­ter­act with their peers, showed more changes in the ar­eas of the brain vi­tal for pro­cess­ing emo­tions and in­ter­pret­ing fa­cial ex­pres­sions and lan­guage.

Does this ex­plain the up­surge in fights we’ve been see­ing among young women in our schools? Is there a phys­i­cal rea­son for the vi­o­lence? Be­fore pun­ish­ing them, should we be do­ing MRI scans on these girls? Should we be look­ing at MRI scans of the brains of those who locked down the coun­try for so long, one of the longest in the world?

The sec­ond MRI study was done in over 15,000 healthy adults who had not ex­pe­ri­enced COVID in­fec­tion. The re­sult? Again, lock­down aged the brain, this time by six months. It was more pro­nounced in males and es­pe­cial­ly those from de­prived so­cioe­co­nom­ic back­grounds. It’s un­clear right now whether this lock­down-as­so­ci­at­ed brain age­ing is re­versible.

For­tu­nate­ly, so far, tests of cere­bral func­tion have re­vealed that men­tal agili­ty de­clined on­ly in peo­ple who had COVID-19 and not in those whose MRIs showed brain age­ing.

One has to as­sume that the in­crease in ag­gres­sion and vi­o­lence in adults over the last five years has more to do with drugs, cor­rup­tion and racial pol­i­tics, than with brain age­ing, whether due to COVID-19 or COVID-19 lock­down.

In sum­ma­ry, af­ter the first year, when the virus had be­come less ag­gres­sive and vac­cines had be­come avail­able, na­tion­al lock­downs were most­ly use­less. Those lock­downs aged our brains. It seems every­body was in­volved, ado­les­cents and adults. More so in ado­les­cent fe­males and adult males, es­pe­cial­ly those men from poor­er ar­eas.

An unan­swered ques­tion is whether the longer the lock­down, the more the brain was af­fect­ed.

We don’t know as yet about chil­dren un­der age 12 but it’s to be ex­pect­ed that be­cause their brains were de­vel­op­ing so much faster, the ef­fect is go­ing to be worse. If it af­fects the age of the brain in chil­dren, how does that trans­late to chil­dren’s emo­tions and be­hav­iour? And did the lock­down do any­thing else to chil­dren’s brains? We’ll find out in the years to come.


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